Seeking for healing in the right place: Homily for Monday, May 19, 2025

There are many in the world that feel lost or broken. They are seeking for healing, but not always in the right places. Seek for Jesus to heal, the only one who can. Readings for Today.

Table of Contents

Seeking for healing

So a few months ago, I got another reminder that I’m getting older. I started, I got a prescription, had to start wearing progressive lenses. I get another reminder in July because I’ll be eligible to claim Social Security. And it all happened so fast.

You know, in so many ways, critical events in our lives change the way that we see. I have to say that until I put on the glasses, particularly for distance, I had reading glasses for a long time, but particularly for distance, I couldn’t believe how much better my eyesight was once I put on these glasses.

And we live in a world where I think it is that people are not seeing clearly. We see that all around. Sometimes we see it because of the decisions that people make and the mess that sometimes life can be. People who deal, let’s say, with addictions or the world where we see so much violence. People in Gaza, for example, starving to death and rescue ships, people that are bringing supplies, basic supplies like food, can’t get through until today.

And so we, during this Easter season, we kind of need a new set of progressive lenses. Because in our culture and in our time, it seems that so often our first response is to say, I can do this, I don’t need any help. I can take this on or I can figure this out, or we just need this social program or that bit of work or whatever, and things will be fine.

But of course, if you’re like me, when I try to do things all by myself, I usually make a mess of things. It is only when I recognize that everything I do, every good thing that I am capable of doing, I can only do because of the grace of God.

So now we see in the first reading this situation with Paul and Barnabas. Firstly, they’re being attacked, and not just by the Jews, but also by the Greeks. It’s Gentiles and Jews, and they just don’t want to hear what Paul and Barnabas have to say. And so they seek to kill them, and they escape, and they encounter this person who has been broken for a long time.

He is, in fact, crippled. He’s been lame from birth. But because Paul sees with the eyes of faith, and sees the action of the Holy Spirit, which enters into the heart, he sees that this crippled man has the faith to be healed. How often do we hear that phrase in connection with any miracle? Jesus says, “Your faith has saved you.” Or the time he asks, “Do you believe that I can do this?” The man is healed, and all of a sudden, Jesus wins friends, at least among the Greeks.

Now, their lives are broken, and they’ve been looking for something that will heal them, that will make them whole. And so, they see this miraculous event, and they presume that this has to be the great gods, Zeus and Hermes, that have come down to earth in human form.

Now, the interesting thing is they’re not that far off. They just get the one who has come down from heaven wrong. It’s not Hermes, it’s not Zeus, it’s Jesus, of course. And this man is healed, but the people are still confused, because they see in Paul and Barnabas something divine, which would be okay, except that they don’t see it in relationship to Jesus.

Because Jesus is the one who makes all the difference. And in the gospel, we get a picture of what Jesus intends for us. We often can wonder in our lives, “What do I need to do to follow Jesus?” Or, “What is it that Jesus really wants from me if I become a disciple?” And yesterday, today, and actually for much of this week, what we’re going to see is that on the one hand, what Jesus wants is simple, and on the other hand, involves quite a lot.

And that’s love. Jesus wants us to love. I’m firmly convinced that when it comes time for the judgment, it won’t be what most people think of, you know, kind of the scales and God weighing the good and the bad and so forth. First of all, that’s heretical. It’s Pelagius, because it presumes that the good deeds we do earn our way into heaven, which is not true. It’s always God’s free gift.

But I don’t think it’s going to be like that at all. I think we’re going to have to answer from God one simple question. How well did you love? Because that’s what comes out of the really, the two great commandments that Jesus says sums up everything that we have to do. Loving God and loving our neighbor.

Now it’s easy to say that. I can easily say, well, yes, of course, we should love God and love our neighbor. The hard part, of course, comes when I don’t want to love my neighbor. I don’t know about you, but there are times in my life where I look at my neighbor and I say, I don’t think that person’s lovable at all. I don’t want to love them. I don’t want to care for them. I don’t want to see in them the person of Christ. I don’t want to see the dignity that they

In the first reading, the misplacing of dignity was in thinking that Paul and Barnabas were Greek gods. In failing to love our neighbor, the misplace is not recognizing that Jesus dwells fully and completely in every human being.

Let’s ask the Lord today, first of all, to give us an outpouring of his grace so that in all we do, we might see more clearly where Jesus is active and alive in our own lives and where it is that Jesus longs to fill our brokenness and who it is that Jesus has sent into our lives so that we might show respect and dignity to the Lord Jesus Christ himself by the way we love our neighbor.

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